Statistics for Sociology: Methods in Context - Researching Classrooms

-It is a highly controlled setting - for example, the teacher and the school control classroom layout and access, as well as pupils' time, activities, noise levels, dress and language while they are in the classroom.

-Young people rarely experience this level of surveillance and control in other areas of their lives.

-Due to this, the classroom behaviour that the researcher observes may not accurately reflect what those involved really think and feel.

-In classroom interactions, teachers and pupils are very experienced at concealing their real thoughts and feelings from each other - another example of impression management - and they may conceal them from the researcher too.

-As the classroom is a fairly small, confined social space with room for perhaps 30 or so people, they are also comparatively simple social settings: in most cases, there are just 2 social roles in the classroom - teacher and pupil. All this makes classroom interaction relatively straightforward to observe and analyse.

-Therefore it may be necessary, for example, to supervise pupils when they are filling in questionnaires, especially if this is done in class, in order to prevent peers from influencing one another's answers.

-Similarly, in group interviews, the true attitudes of individual pupils may be hidden behind the dominant attitudes of the peer group.